noun

This creates a bond between the two of them, both of whom are viewed as eccentrics by the community.

The story goes that a local eccentric who built a huge house on the shore complete with caves, underground passages and exotic animals in the grounds, sailed one across the lake during a storm.

Which got me thinking about local characters and eccentrics - like the gentleman who could be seen for years until the mid-1980s walking around Greenwich immaculately turned out, with his Siamese cat on a lead.

Origin

Eccentric started life in the astronomical sense, meaning ‘a circle or orbit not having the earth precisely in its centre’, before taking on its main modern meaning of ‘unconventional and slightly strange’ as it were ‘off centre’ in the mid 17th century. It comes from Greek ekkentros, from ek ‘out of’ and kentron ‘centre’.